The three principal objects of this vision are the woman clothed with the sun, the man-child born of her, and a red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. These, being drawn from nature and human life, would point us both to the church and to the state for their fulfilment. The symbols, also, are living agents, and we should expect the objects they represent to be such.
This woman is an appropriate symbol of the church of God, which is composed of living, intelligent beings; and that it is the true and not an apostate one, is shown by the fact that upon her flight into the wilderness she had a place prepared of God where she was nourished for twelve hundred and sixty days. In a subsequent portion of the Apocalypse a vile harlot is taken as the representative of the church apostate. In this way a proper correspondence of character and quality is kept up. This woman appeared, not in the temple above, but in the firmament of heaven, where she was clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars. Thus the brightest luminaries of heaven were gathered around her. Arrayed in this splendid manner, she is easily distinguished from an apostate church, which would not be so highly favored with such attire in this exalted position. Doubtless the objects with which she is adorned have some special signification. The moon is a fit symbol of the old covenant, above which the church had just risen, only to be clothed in the superior brightness and glory of the new covenant. And as the moon shines only with a borrowed light, obtaining its illumination from the sun; so, also, the old covenant was only a shadow of the good things to come and now stands eclipsed in the brightness and transcendant glory of that new and better dispensation. According to the explanation given of the seven stars in the right hand of Jesus (chap. [1:19]), we are authorized to regard stars as a symbol of Christian ministers, and the twelve that appear most prominently in the first history of the church are the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
The dragon, a beast from the natural world, would properly symbolize a tyrannical, persecuting government. This was a red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. In the following chapter we read that John saw a beast rising up out of the sea with the same number of heads and horns, but ten crowns on his horns. And the dragon gave him (the beast) "his power, and his seat, and great authority." Verse 2. So far as the heads and horns are concerned, the only difference between the two is that the crowns—a symbol of supreme authority and power—have been transferred from the heads to the horns. In [chapter 17] John saw the same beast again and there received the following explanation of the seven heads: "And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh he must continue a short space." Verse 10. Concerning the horns he was told, "The ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet." Verse 12. With this explanation before us it will be easy to identify the dragon of chapter 12 and the beast of chapters [13] and [17] as the Roman empire, the first under the Pagan and the second under the Papal form. The seven heads signify the seven distinct forms of supreme government that ruled successively in the empire. The five that had already fallen when John received the vision were the Regal power, the Consular, the Decemvirate, the Military Tribunes and the Triumvirate. "One is"—the Imperial.[8] The identification of its seventh and last head we shall leave until later. The ten horns, or kingdoms, which had not yet arisen when the Revelation was given, were the ten minor kingdoms that grew out of the Western Roman empire during its decline and fall. The historian Machiard, in giving an account of these nations, and without any reference to the Bible or its prophecies, reckons ten kingdoms, as follows:
1. The Ostrogoths in Maesia;
2. The Visigoths in Pannonia;
3. Sueves and Alans in Gascoigne and Spain;
4. Vandals in Africa;
5. Franks in France;
6. Burgundians in Burgundy;
7. Heruli and Turings in Italy;
8. Saxons and Anglis in Britain;
9. Huns in Hungary;
10. Lombards, at first on the Danube, and afterwards in Italy.
Footnote 8: [(return)]
The fact that commentators and historians differ in their enumeration of the forms of government that ruled in Rome is often a source of confusion to ordinary readers. Hence an explanation is necessary. Rome was first ruled by kings, and therefore the first form of government is designated by either the term Kings or the term Regal Power. Upon the expulsion of the kings and the formation of the republic, the royal power was entrusted to two men who held it for a year, and were called consuls. In times of great public danger the consuls were superseded by a special officer called a dictator, who had supreme power. As the early life of the republic was often threatened with grave dangers, Rome was often governed by a dictator; hence this form of government is sometimes called the Dictatorship. The third form was the Decemviri, a government by ten men, who compiled the twelve famous Tables of Laws. In 444 B.C. another change was made by the appointment of Military Tribunes (whose numbers varied) with consular power. These were frequently called Consuls. The fifth form was the Triumvirate, a government by three men. The sixth was the Imperial. Hence the different forms can be enumerated thus: 1. The Regal Power, or Kings. 2. Consula or Dictators. 3. Decemvirate. 4. Military Tribunes, Tribunes, or Consuls. 5. Triumvirate. 6. Imperial. The seventh form will be considered in another place. See remarks on chap. [17:7-11].
Other historians agree substantially with this. These kingdoms all arose within one hundred and seventy years. The dragon is described with the horns, although they were not now in existence and did not arise until nearly the time when the dragon became the beast; likewise, he is represented with seven heads, although he really possessed only one head at a time, and five had already fallen and one being yet to come. He is described with all the heads and horns he ever had or was to have.
The tail of this dragon "drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth." Some people who have never learned the nature of symbolic language try to imagine such a literal creature as the one here described and picture in their minds what an awful thing it would be to see the third part of the stars falling to the earth. But real stars that are fixed or planetary never fall, and if they did, they would be as apt to fall in an opposite direction as toward the earth. Besides, if one should come tumbling down here, it would knock this world into oblivion. But with a knowledge of the proper use of symbols we can easily identify this dragon with the Roman empire under its Pagan form; and the casting down of the stars, which were doubtless used as symbols of ministers as in verse 1, signifies the warfare which this awful beast power waged against the church of God, in which her ministers were always a shining mark for the first persecution and suffered terribly for the cause they represented.
The man-child is the next object that claims our attention. Some have supposed that it represented Jesus Christ in his first advent to the world. But this could not be; for Christ is never represented as being the offspring of the church, but, on the other hand, is declared to be its originator. Some, also, have supposed that it represented the church bringing forth Christ to the world in a spiritual sense. This, however, would be in direct conflict with the known laws of symbolic language. A visible, living, intelligent agent, such as this man-child evidently was, could not be the symbol of an invisible spiritual presence. Besides, it has been clearly shown that Christ always appears in his own person, unrepresented by another, from the fact that he can not be symbolized. It is clear that this child can not signify a single definite personage; for after he is caught up to God, there is still a remnant of the woman's seed left upon earth. See verse 17.